Biden reaffirms belief that the Equal Rights Amendment is the law
A girl is seen in between "ERA NOW" signs as people hold a rally in front of the National Archives to highlight President Joe Biden's decision to declare the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution, Friday in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
President Joe Biden declared that the Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land Friday morning, using his bully pulpit to try to push forward the amendment, first proposed more than a century ago, that would enshrine sex equality in the U.S. Constitution.
“I have supported the Equal Rights Amendment for more than 50 years, and I have long been clear that no one should be discriminated against based on their sex. We, as a nation, must affirm and protect women’s full equality once and for all,” Biden said in a statement, adding that “it is long past time to recognize the will of the American people.”
Last month, Biden’s last as president, more than 120 House Democrats signed a letter asking him to urge the nation’s archivist to recognize the ratification of the amendment by publishing it.
At the 2024 ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago in August, the Association’s House of Delegates adopted Resolution 601, backing the addition of the amendment to the Constitution. Biden referenced the resolution in his statement.
“He is using his power of the presidency to make it clear that he believes—and he agrees with leading constitutional scholars and the American Bar Association—not that it should be, but it is the 28th Amendment of the Constitution,” a senior Biden administration official told CNN.
The amendment has not been added to the Constitution because not enough states ratified it in time to meet a deadline mandated by Congress. If the archivist publishes the amendment, legal challenges would undoubtedly question its validity, even though it has met all constitutional requirements.
The ERA initially passed the U.S. House in 1971 by a broad margin—354-24. The Senate passed it a year later, 84-8. But it took nearly five decades for three-fourths of the states—a total of 38—to ratify the amendment as required by the Constitution.
Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA in January 2020, nearly 30 years after the 1982 deadline Congress had set when it approved the legislation.
It’s unclear whether Biden’s action is more than an eleventh-hour use of what remains of his presidential platform. The president has no constitutional role in ratifying amendments—he cannot order the archivist to publish it—and Biden leaves office Monday morning.
Biden has spent the past few months, and especially this week, seeking to cement his legacy, praising his administration’s record on the economy and foreign policy and suggesting that time will prove his critics wrong. He has also used the power of his presidential pen to take executive actions that his administration hopes will be hard for the incoming administration to undo.
Also on Friday, for example, Biden began the process of commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.
